Webware

Music and Web surfing mashup Songbird is out with an impressive number of features that were missing from the last major update. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, version 1.1.1 introduces album art downloading, MTP device support, watch folders, improved sorting, and numerous other performance enhancements and bug fixes.

Album art comes to browser/jukebox Songbird.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

This version continues to push the more iTunes-esque feel of the jukebox/browser, but that's a change users will just have to get used to. Grabbing context-menu album art worked quickly, although users should remember to highlight an entire album to get the art to apply to all tracks. If you only remember to do that after the fact, select all the tracks and run the album art finder again to apply the art to all of them.

The album art feature doesn't work perfectly, though. Although users can replace album art through a track's metadata pane, if you resize the art window in the main dashboard the art itself won't resize. A minor bug, but slightly annoying.

The MTP device support includes the ability to sync DRM-restricted songs between Songbird and your portable media player. Zunes, Sansas, Zens, and others can now be used in conjunction with Songbird. The entire list of support MTP devices and known issues can be read here.

Using Watch folders to monitor regularly changed folders is one way to monitor for new songs or removed albums, but it also makes managing a third-party podcast catcher significantly easier. Setting this up takes a bit of hunting and pecking, but it turns out that the option lives under Tools/Options/Media Importer; then click on the Watch Folders tab. Note that this is a fairly sophisticated watch folder system, and it will remove from your library what you delete, as well as making additions.

Watch folders make it easy to keep your library free from detritus.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Some of the other changes include replay gain normalization, so if the metadata includes that information, Songbird will now play back the song as you intended. 'Bird-watchers who've been frustated with the unicode and sorting support should find big improvements in handling indefinite and definite articles at the beginning of song, artist, and album names.

There's also support for the 7Digital online music store, which offers high-end MP3s up to 320Kbps. The Mac download size has been reduced by 45 percent, and the memory usage in large libraries has apparently been reduced significantly. I encountered no stability or playback problems running Firefox, Songbird, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, and other programs simultaneously.

If the first two programs you start up are your Web browser and your music jukebox, and not necessarily in that order, Songbird keeps getting better and is worth a look.

As someone who spends most of his day on the computer, I need to do everything I can to keep myself entertained. Sometimes, that manifests itself in games and other times I find entertainment on the Web through online music services.

For years, I used Pandora, the song-discovery service powered by the Music Genome Project, and loved every minute of it. But over the past couple months, things have changed and I've quickly started to dedicate all my music time to MySpace Music.

The reasons why are numerous, but I should first note that I've got some issue with the service. First off, it's inundated with ads, and no matter where you go, you can bet that any MySpace Music page will be flanked by blinking advertisements or other unwelcome additions that detract somewhat from an otherwise outstanding service.

I should also mention that MySpace Music doesn't allow its users to share playlists, which is a bit annoying. You also can't have it "on-the-go" nearly as easily as you can with a site like Pandora, which offers a mobile app for those who want to hear music while away from their computer.

Other than that, though, I simply love MySpace Music. It's the single reason why my love affair with Pandora is over and it's my first destination when I want to listen to music while I work. Simply put, it's outstanding.

Songs, songs, songs
As much as I enjoy the discovery engine on Pandora, I'd much rather have the option to build my own playlist of songs and listen to only those titles I want to hear. That's a luxury I really don't have on Pandora, but it's the backbone of what makes MySpace Music great.

MySpace Music currently offers millions (yes, millions) of songs from artists ranging from the popular, like Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen, to the obscure, like Deerhunter. And unlike most services in the space... Read more

This blog was updated first at 12:30 p.m. PST with some reader feedback and then at 1:40 p.m. PST to include an interview with Bopaboo's CEO.

"Stop illegally sharing, and start legally selling" is the tagline for a start-up that wants to enable music owners to sell their unwanted MP3s.

Ernesto at the blog TorrentFreak has a story about Bopaboo, which has created a digital marketplace where users operate mini download stores.

Bopaboo buyers can search for music in all the usual ways, and the site offers a seller rating to help shoppers learn a merchant's reputation. Sellers register and then are given an MP3 store, where they can upload the music they want to sell. No DRM-wrapped music is allowed, so iTunes owners like me are blocked from selling.

According to TorrentFreak, there is no limit on the number of songs that can be offered. Sellers select their own prices but, of course, must cut Bopaboo a percentage of sales.

This was an idea bound to emerge out of the craze over songs stripped of digital rights management software. People have traded DVDs, mixed tapes, and albums for decades.

Bopaboo says the site is legal, and it sounds like it should be. Don't people own their MP3s? We'll see.

UPDATE: 12:30 p.m. PT: Several of you readers have pointed out that it's going to be tough, if not impossible, to prevent people from reselling songs over and over. This sounds like a fight in the making with the music industry. I've got a few calls in, so I'll further update this post with any objections from the Recording Industry Association of America.

UPDATE: 1:40 p.m. PT: Okay, here's the juice from Bopaboo CEO Alex Meshkin, a 28-year-old who didn't go to college, doesn't know programming but once ran Toyota's Nascar team. Yes, Nascar team. He added that Bopaboo is a Washington D.C.-based company founded a year ago.

I put the most important question to him first.

Q: Why don't you think the recording industry is going to sue you into oblivion?
Meshkin: Obviously, MP3s are very easy to duplicate...It's very difficult to tell the difference between a so-called new copy and a so-called old copy...I can buy a CD and I can rip it and that behavior has basically been endorsed by the music industry. I can resell that CD on Amazon. The industry doesn't have a way to monetize physical goods being traded on the secondary market. The first-sale doctrine protects that right. In the physical world consumers have the right to resell their property and copyright owners can't do anything about that."

Okay, but there's no way that the four largest music labels are going to sit back and let you enable people to sell multiple copies of the same song. Isn't that what people will be able to do using your digital marketplace?
Meshkin: We have the technology in place to prevent you from selling a song more than one time...We take a digital fingerprint through every upload that prevents a user from uploading to our service a track more than one time. Actually we've come up with an algorithm, which is beyond what even (digital filtering company) Gracenote does with song identification.

Have you spoken to the big recording companies or the RIAA?
Talks have sped up...I will be in New York later this week for meetings. The talks so far have been positive and the labels are inclined to look at alternative business models to monetize.

Music and browsing mashup Songbird has kicked the remnants of its shell to the curb. With the release of version 1.0.0 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the program's main emphasis as a music browser couldn't be more clear.

Songbird's familiar layout should make it easy for many to combine their browsing and music playback in one tool.

(Credit: Pioneers of the Inevitable)

If you looked at some of the earlier beta versions, Songbird's interface borrowed heavily from Firefox. More recent versions took their cue from iTunes, with Web browsing occurring in a second tab. Although toggling between your music library and the browser is as easy as switching tabs, since Songbird opens your library by default it's apparent where the publisher thinks users will want to focus.

This is arguably a smart strategy, too, given the attention that the latest round of browser battles has garnered. The music library layout feels intuitive, owing much to iTunes. Album art appears in the lower left corner with a navigation tree above it. A button at the bottom of the sidebar lets you toggle both. The music player controls can be configured to appear at the top or the bottom of the main window via the Views menu. Drag-and-drop would be a nice feature here, although not essential.

The Filter pane defaults to appear, and lives at the top of the interface above the browsing tabs. Again, it can be hidden in the Views menu. The Filter pane is included by default, but if you click on the dual-pane icon next to the Search box and click on Get more media views, you can install extensions that provide you with a Cover Flow facsimile, a tag cloud, and others.

The Library browsing tab is hard-coded to appear and the tab lives permanently above the left sidebar. Overall, though, the interface shouldn't be a drastic change if you're familiar with iTunes, and shares enough options with other media players that you won't feel like you're locked in to what Songbird's designers had in mind.

If you're into skins or Firefox themes, Songbird supports those as Feathers. A quick search through the feathers options on the Songbird Web site indicates that, just as with Firefox, black themes are in. Way in. Switching installed feathers works the same as in Firefox, although in Songbird the reboot happens so fast it appears as if it's doing it on the fly. A right-nav toggle reveals a pane for managing your display pane add-ons.

Songbird's not just about its plumage--it's got some meat on its bird-bones. Besides the rolled-in jukebox, there's the native support for Last.fm, and an included add-on for MashTape. Additional add-ons can provide a lyrics pane, music recommendations, and more. The audio engine is Gstreamer, which is used in all Songbird platforms, and an included plug-in provides device support that's otherwise still in beta. However, when syncing files with an iPod Classic, I ran into zero problems.

Songbird doesn't have all of the features that Firefox 3 does. The address bar lacks its "awesome" upgrade--some users will surely see that as an improvement. It appears that many of the Firefox 3 visual security improvements, such as the favicon color change and the unsafe site warning, haven't made it into Songbird.

There are other major features that are still in development. Album art fetching is not yet natively supported, nor is video playback, watch folders, or feed management. These drawbacks, though, shouldn't keep you from checking out Songbird.

Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.

Music jukebox and Web browser mash-up Songbird has begun to pull away from the beta gate. In its first release candidate for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the Gecko-powered browser aimed at audio junkies locks down a final list of features.

Songbird mimics the iTunes interface, but rolls in Firefox-powered Web surfing and Web-based music discovery.

(Credit: Songbird)

The improvements over the previous release, version 0.7, make changes both important and minor. Absolutely the most noticeable is that the program runs and feels faster. Responsiveness had been an issue, too, but this release candidate marks a strong improvement in that area as well.

The overall look of Songbird hasn't changed, but a lot of the must-have UI features are finally in place. Keyboard shortcuts have been added, as has a comprehensive list of them accessible from the Help menu. The right-click accessible Context menu and the File menu from the Menubar now allow users to open up the folder location of a track. Column headings properties are now easier to manage, too. New buttons control toggle individual panes, and smart playlists can be used as rules within other smart playlists.

With the exception of that playlist feature, which is unusual for jukebox playlist behavior, these changes make Songbird's interface as familiar-feeling as possible.

Audiophiles should appreciate that Songbird has switched over to Gstreamer as their playback engine across all platforms. This means that Songbird can play MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis files on all platforms, WMA tracks on Windows, and AAC on both Windows and Mac.

Also of note, the last official version of Songbird for PowerPC Macs was v0.6.1. According to the developers, this was done to save on developer resources.

I've been playing around with Songbird for about a year now, and it's great to see this innovative program come as far as it has. Although I'm curious to see how it adapts to being forever tied to Firefox improvements, that's also an ongoing concern for that other multi-use Firefox mash-up, Flock.

Throw in these drastically different Firefox-based browsers with the current browser battle going on between Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox itself, and you're looking at a wide range of quality choices.

Lala is betting big that consumers will one day pay to store songs in digital music lockers.

(Credit: Lala.com)

Lala.com is finished helping users swap CDs and no longer is it interested in just being a Web radio station.

Stick with me here because Lala.com's new business model, as well as its history, is kind of convoluted and that's part of the problem.

The music service--on its third incarnation--is offering a way for consumers to store songs in digital storage lockers and access them from any Web-enabled device. For those of you who have been around a while, this may sound a lot like MP3.com or even MP3tunes.com, companies started by Michael Robertson, the serial tech entrepreneur. (MP3.com is now owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive.)

Robertson wanted users to upload copies of their own music into digital lockers. In contrast, Lala has licensed music from the four largest recording companies and a host of indie labels. Once a user downloads the company's software, it will scan the user's hard drive and maintain a copy of their music libraries in the so-called cloud. The beauty of this is it will even make copies of music protected by copy-protection software. The library can then be streamed to any Web-enabled device. Cool, right?

But there's one big obstacle. I still can't access the Web from everywhere. I take San Francisco's Muni train. What happens when I'm underground and don't have Internet access? That means dead air. And above ground, there are still plenty of places that lack Wi-Fi or network coverage.

Internet access will only continue to grow, but it's got a long way to go before it rivals my iPod or any other digital music player. I download a song to my iPhone and it's guaranteed to play regardless of my location. Bill Nguyen, Lala's charismatic cofounder, disagrees. He sees a world dominated by the browser.

"Will you ever (in the future) use an electronic device if it's not connected or doesn't have a browser?" Nguyen asked. "Think iPhone/iTouch/iPod for a moment. They went from $200 for 60GB to $300 for 16GB. What did you get for the 50 percent increase in price and 73 percent drop in storage? We got a wireless connection and a browser.

"PC's are going the same way," Nguyen continued, "with the hottest category being Netbooks that forego fancy hardware and big screens for an affordable price, light weight and a Wifi connection. You've got to face it, there's nothing you don't do in a browser."

The novel way Lala plans to make money is by requiring people to pay for unlimited access to their songs. If a user wishes to listen to an entire song free of charge, he or she can but only once. To have unlimited access to the music in their lockers, users must pay 10 cents a song (Note: the 10-cent charge only applies for streaming music or "Web songs" purchased from Lala). Great price, but it comes with some serious strings. Remember, you can't download these songs. They have to be streamed.

For those people who want to own their music outright, Lala will be happy to sell tracks free of any copy protection software. But so do a lot of other stores, including Amazon.com, Rhapsody, and Walmart.com.

My point is that there are very few problems that this version of Lala solves in a unique way--plenty of companies, including MySpace and iMeem already offer streaming music. (I won't even get into how difficult it likely will be to explain all of this to consumers.)

The biggest selling point Lala offers is that users can claim their music from a range of devices and that means they are not locked into one gadget or any DRM scheme. Where Lala fails--at least for now--is that it can't deliver music where Wi-Fi or network coverage is spotty.

Lala has to hope technology catches up to its business model.

Last.fm's music-centered social network is one of our favorite ways to discover, share, and stream music online. Currently in version 1.01, the Last.fm application for the iPhone and iPod Touch allows many of the best features of Last.fm to break away from your computer and go on the road with you. The Last.fm app isn't perfect, however, and people looking for a straightforward Internet radio application would do better with offerings from Pandora and AOL.

The Last.fm app's main menu offers many ways to hear streaming music...maybe too many.

When launching the Last.fm iPhone app for the first time, you'll be prompted to enter your existing Last.fm account username and password, or you'll be offered the option to create a new account. If you're new to Last.fm, we recommend you get started with the service using your home computer, since many features depend on an ongoing analysis of your computer's music collection (also known as scrobbling).

Once you're logged in, the Last.fm app offers eight ways to stream music over EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi. You can listen to songs Last.fm has already scrobbled from your computer's music collection, treat yourself to recommended songs, do a cold search for new music, or hear what your friends have been listening to. The music playback screen is similar to Apple's own iPod screen, displaying large cover art, volume, pause, and skip controls, as well as an iTunes purchase link and Last.fm's own song rating buttons, which help to steer the quality of song recommendations. On the very bottom edge of the screen you'll find tabs for the currently playing track, artist biography, similar artists, events (such as related concerts), and a More tab that includes the track's tag information and Top Listeners.

With all its features, tabs, and buttons, the Last.fm app is one of the most in-depth and dynamic streaming music applications available for the iPhone. Unfortunately, despite its ambitious list of features, the program is bogged down with performance issues that make it frustrating to use at times. During testing in both Wi-Fi and 3G modes, we often experienced 5 to 10 second buffer delays each time we initiated a music stream or skipped between songs. The buffer issues subsided under ideal circumstances where Wi-Fi or 3G reception was strong; however, similar streaming audio applications from Pandora and AOL offered better streaming performance under more realistic conditions.

With any luck, future updates to the Last.fm app will improve streaming music reliability and refine the somewhat confusing assortment of menu options and playback screen features. In its current state, the Last.fm app presents a bite-size version of the Last.fm Web site experience in a way that may satisfy existing users, but is unlikely to win new converts.

Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.

We swear, there's no reading required to expand your musical horizons these days. Well...aside from this article, at least.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

When you're young, new music is everywhere: radio, Facebook profiles, borrowed iPods, or even burned CDs. It's not hard to find tunes you love. The music appetites of 13- to 21-year-olds are voracious and the consequences of being musically unhip can be punishing.

Then something happens: you get older; work a full-time job; get married; have a mortgage; have children; adopt a particularly demanding parrot; and so on. You wake up one day and realize your taste in music hasn't budged since your early '20s and the prospect of discovering good, new music now seems like an overwhelming chore, fraught with disappointment. I know, I'm living proof.

We're all familiar with the long, depressing list of activities that seemed easy in youth that now take effort. Fortunately, finding good music isn't as tough as working off that middle-age gut. Since its inception, the Internet has helped us--mostly illegally--discover new music. Finally, tools for legal and efficient online music discovery are hitting their stride.

To help you help yourself, we've collected our favorite techniques to help the lazy, hurried, or unhip (or, face it, aging) connect with good, new music.

Listening to MP3s of robotic voices reading stories from the Web is a good way to prepare for the eventual downfall of mankind at the hands of our robotic overlords. If you're into that kind of thing, Hearwho will do all the heavy lifting for you by converting any text you feed it into a downloadable MP3 file.

If you've spent hours amusing yourself playing with AT&T's text-to-speech demo, you'll be glad to know that Hearwho does away with the somewhat annoying 300-character limit. I dumped an entire 800-word story into the text box and had a playable MP3 file in around 15 minutes.

To speed up the process, you can either use less text or dial down the quality. There are four compression settings to crunch a file down to a proper size. You can also toggle between male and female speakers, and whether you want it spoken in English or Spanish.

One thing to note is that if you're doing this with blog posts, the blog you're grabbing the feed from might already have an audio-RSS feed that you can simply subscribe to. A good directory of these feeds can be found at Stitcher, which also has a really neat iPhone Web app.

Note: Hearwho's servers are pretty slammed right now. Your text might take a half hour or longer to get converted--which is abnormal.

[via Lifehacker and Techie Portal]